The 911 so rare, Porsche kept it a secret for 10 years

December 23, 2016

Transcript

[MUSIC]
There are rare cars.
There are ultra rare cars.
And then there's the 1994 Porsche 964 Turbo Flatnose.
This car is shrouded in mystery.
In an age before the internet, it was possible for a manufacturer like Porsche, to develop and produce a car in relative secrecy.
And to surprise even their own dealers.
When they told them in short notice it will be in option they could sell to their customers information on the cars so scant, it wasn't even officially acknowledged by Porsche to actually existed untill 2004, over tem years after the car had been produced.
I was then the Porsche confirmed that only 76 had ever been made.
Add to that small number, the fact that only 27 were made to this specification, for outside of the U.S.A.
and Japan.
And this is one of only 2 known to have been fitted with right hand drive.
This is one of the rarest road-going Porsches ever.
That's a base price of $160,000 and some going for as much as $190,000, all the way back in 1994.
It is one of the most expensive road-going Porsches ever Even by today's standards.
And it's the last of the truly hand built 911s.
It has a 3.6 liter single turbo charged engine, 385 horsepower, and criminally few miles on the clock.
All in all, this is a pretty special ride.
And today I have it and a track.
All to myself.
[NOISE] So, for the story of this most ridiculously rare car, we have to go back to the mid 70s, Norbert Singer and group five racing, because in that series the 935 Needed an edge.
And Norbert Singer had gone through the rulebook and found a loophole.
He was able to remove the headlights that creates a flatter, more aerodynamic front to the car.
And so the flat nose was born.
Later that flat nose was offered as a customer option on the 930.
Not many were picked up though, so it has now become an extremely rare car.
And a bit later again, when the The 964 was being discontinued in favor of the new 993.
This car was Porsche's way of saying goodbye.
Customers were given the chance to buy one, but they had to put down a $20,000 deposit and all they had to go on With a sketch of what the car could look like.
It actually never looked anything like the picture and only 76 people took Porsche up on the offer.
Now there are some touches on this car that make it quite easy to spot to the eagle eyed Viewer.
The slanted nose, flat nose, or [FOREIGN] as it's known in German, for flat construction, is the most obvious.
Those headlamps look like they're straight out of a 968 and they give a huge amount of character to this car.
From the driver's position, they look absolutely ridiculous.
And from the outside of the car they don't look that much more serious.
But they're a lot of fun.
And when they fold back in you're back to that aerodynamic flat nose again.
You might notice some other touches though that distinguish this from a regular 964 turbo, those intakes over the rear wheel arches for example, those are straight out of the 959.
But really, for me the story is about driving [INAUDIBLE] This thing.
Now this is the last of the rear-wheel drive turbos.
So here we have 350 odd horsepower, total speed of 180 miles an hour, 0 to 60 in 4 seconds flat.
And all of the power, is going to the real wheels.
It makes this thing slightly more lively than the current 991 generation turbo.
well, slightly is not the right word.
But the manual gear box of course...
and I tell you what..I enjoy this more than the modern manual gearboxes on Porsches.
The cars travel as far but is not as hard work as modern cars by a long...
Slingshot.
This has the same problem that all Porsches had where the pedal box seems to be offset by a good half foot to the left so your whole body feels twisted.
But really, apart from that I find it hard to fault this car.
It's difficult to drive, you feel When pushing around the corners, you feel like twitching.
You feel the steering gets a bit motty.
So that's what real driving is meant to be about.
And the force shift turbo is meant to be scary.
This car is a widow maker.
And it has a reputation most known to [UNKNOWN] to the experience of driving this is to have the turbo feels.
For low 4,000 revs It feels nice, and calm, and building.
And then when you hit 4,000 revs, it just kicks out of nowhere.
It just hits you like a force.
It's jumps up so quickly.
And you, Feel like you have to get on the brakes almost immediately.
That turbo kicks you from 4,000 to 6,000 rev like it's no one's business.
For track driving, you have to keep it smoother to make any use of it for any Any amount of time, but when that turbo kicks in it feels like a real turbo Porsche.
All Porsche Carreras are going to be turbo charged now, but this is what we mean when we say 911 turbo.
This is not the kind of car that you could ever learn to drive well in.
You need to get in this car knowing how to drive.
Your lessons will be very soon cut short by a very abrupt stop and a In a ditch if you let this thing get away from you.
It feels like all the best bits of the 80s, married with 90s technology.
I don't know if I could live with this car on a day-to-day basis.
I genuinely Then we would have too much fun and die if I drove this car too much.
And apparently, that's what the owner must have thought as well.
Because despite this car being 22 years old, it has only about 600 miles on the clock.
So let's put a few more on
[MUSIC]
Driving this car today has been an enormous privilege.
In a way, it's made me sad.
It's reminded me of everything that we've lost in modern cars, and in modern 911 Those are all great cars, but there's just something about this, this perfect harmony between design and engineering.
And the skills it requires to drive make you feel alive behind the wheel.
This thing is amazing.
[MUSIC]